


And the Wind Spoke in Riddles

by BlindBrilliance



Category: Naruto
Genre: Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Prosthesis, Spiritual, Suicide Attempt, umm excuse me where is the world-building tag, world-building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-18 20:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20197939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlindBrilliance/pseuds/BlindBrilliance
Summary: Sasori listened to the wind but never understood.





	And the Wind Spoke in Riddles

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, so I’ve been reading fanfic for years but I’ve never written anything. The last time I actually wrote something that brought me joy was over a year ago. I blame highschool for squeezing out my creativity and originality (kind of worrying, because I still have one year left). I’m also really out of practice, so if anyone reading this finds a mistake every other sentence: I’m sorry. If you want to take the time to comment I would love if you pointed out my mistakes. For now just enjoy reading this obscure amateur story written by me (I listened to the minecraft soundtrack while writing, because minecraft makes me happy).

When you look for a good example of a ninja, you want for one who is highly skilled, deadly, and above all, loyal to a fault for the hidden village they inhabit. Sasori, even at an incredibly young age, meets the first two criteria on that list perfectly, but not the last. Maybe he did far off in the past during his genin years, but that loyalty lasted about as long as his time as a genin, which is to say: not long. The disappearance of his loyalty in all likeliness died along with his parents, but Sasori hid his altered - and treasonous - mindset with a speed and rigorousness only shown when someone knew they were doing something wrong, and he performed it in the detached clinical way that could solely be done by a ninja. The solitary person who saw through his facade was his Granny; Sasori knew that she knew, but he also understood he was his Granny Chiyo’s soft spot on her carapace of wit and ruthlessness, so her suspicion didn’t worry him.

Sasori stayed in the village for a time because the security that comes with a ninja village was a benefit to him, and honed his ninja art. Chiyo observed him with a level of weariness too weak to report to the Kazekage, but too great to confront him with regards to his slowly diminishing loyalty. He grew distanced from her, this link that connected him to the rest of the village, and in correlation he began to shy away from the rest of the Suna nin and civilians as well. There was a single boy, however, that was Sasori’s shelter in his tumultuous sandstorm of change. Komushi was as stolid and firm as a rock; his presence was grounding to Sasori, and - though he never admitted it - the only reason he remained in the village as long as he did.

On a late night when Sasori was refining and blending a plethora of poisons, he attempted to talk to his steady and well meaning friend about his thoughts of the village.

“What do you think makes a shinobi fight for their village?” Sasori questioned. His head had taken a bird-like tilt; brown eyes held laser focus on a pipette that was releasing the enzyme sphingomyelinase D into a water based solution, making a deadly tincture. His hands were steady as humanly possible, care put into his every move. One drip of the enzyme was released and ripples ran across the fluid held in the beaker.

“Ah, the age old question. Do you know, Sasori, that if every nin in Suna got five yen for each time that question was asked, we would never have to go on missions?” Directly after Komushi’s comment, an uncontrollable shudder ran through Sasori, causing the pipette to release one drop too many of the solution. The strain was ruined. Damn.

Hearing Sasori’s muttered curse, Komushi perked up. “Something the matter?” With an acknowledging grunt, Sasori set his dripping pipette on the table. A cool glare smoothed across his face, doll-like features turning harsh and ugly.

“It’s the poison. I added too much sphingomyelinase, so now it will take too quickly.” Sasori sighed, leaned his back against the table, and crossed his arms. Now he would have to waste time making more solute for the sphingomyelinase. Precious time.

“. . . A-ah. So you made a poison that was too deadly? I thought that was the point.” Komushi’s eyes crinkled, and a helpless smile formed on his face. He was taller than Sasori, which never failed to make him angry. For a moment, Sasori thought of cutting him down. Easy slices of metal through flesh and tendons, the jarring halt once it met bone and the rough grating as it broke past it; he could just cut the legs and give him a shorter prosthetic replacement. It would be easy after the experience performing the surgery on Komushi’s arm, and easier for Komushi himself if he had the prostheses. A creeping, inevitable ache would build in a ninja’s knees throughout their career like like the sand that slowly wore down the building of Sunagakure. Slowing the process was a possibility, with proper care, but why waste time hemming and hawing over an inescapable burden when you could stop it at its source? Sasori was brought out of his reverie by the question Komushi asked.

“It might be for some,” Sasori affirmed, “but my poisons are an art. If they don’t kill slowly there’s not a point.” With his final statement, Sasori twisted to again face the table and deftly lifted both beaker and pipette, placing them behind lock and key in a shelf carved into the stucco of his workroom.

“What even is sphingmywhatsitsname?” Komushi questioned, squinting over at the near-empty pipette laying innocently on the shelf.

“It’s an enzyme drawn from a species named Loxosceles reclusa.” Sasori’s reply was met with a slow blink.

“What even is Lox-,” “It’s a Brown Recluse.” Sasori interrupted, peeling nitrile gloves off his hands then tossing them into the garbage can across the room.

“The venom destroys tissues. And no, there is no antidote, not until someone figures out how to reverse cellular decomposition.” Komushi propped his elbows on the table and shot Sasori a wide smile. His eyes were glossed over with mirth, and Sasori glowered back in retaliation.

Komushi opened his mouth and in a teasing croon said,“Drawing venom from an outside source, eh? Must’ve taken a lot of time and patience. My little Saso-chan is finally growing up.” Komushi released a loud guffaw, dodging when Sasori aimed a kick at him and jogging out of the workroom with his laughter following behind. Only when Komushi was gone did Sasori realize he didn’t get to talk about his thoughts of the village.

And he would never get the chance again, because for the first time in his life Sasori was careless with his poisons. He didn’t notice the single drop that escaped the pipette and landed on the table; neither did he notice Komushi placing his elbow in the small puddle, or the small cut on his elbow that made it possible for the poison to seep in. He realized his mistake when he saw Komushi’s body writhing on the metal plates of Granny Chiyo’s exam table. Sick rose in his stomach, and Sasori was reminded of the morning when Granny Chiyo had told him his parents were dead. Brown eyes locked with green and held contact before the latter pair rolled back into their skull in a final farewell.

Three weeks later, Sasori was made jonin, and he thanked his village by abandoning it.

At age fourteen Sasori was the youngest ninja to ever betray Sunagakure. At age fourteen Sasori was the youngest ninja in the bingo books. At age fourteen the heaviness that weighed down Sasori’s shoulders lifted.

There was a presence following him. Sasori never truly saw It, but felt It in the wind, heard It in the shifting sands, saw It in the sunborn mirages and never dared to christen It with a name. A witness to all his sins and revelations. It was under this presence where Sasori cried. Where he screamed and begged and slept and grieved; he was raw emotion released into the wilds. He was the product of love and the product of war, a child in body but an adult in mind who was more likely to know how to kill than to spare. Loathing and hopelessness saturated his psyche, and the tension he left behind with the village returned again to his shoulders; muscles knotted and burned. Physical and emotional pain fell over his body like a cloak and engulfed all he was. Every step over the sands of Suna was its own private battle. The whites of his eyes turned pink, his lips were chapped enough that blood was seeping out of the cuts, and with such dry air he was now prone to frequent nosebleeds that easily dried in the desert heat, creating a thick coagulation down his lips and chin with layers and layers of crusted blood. Then, at his lowest point when he had cried and pissed himself dry, crawling to a cliff in an attempt to off himself, the presence lifted him and said You will understand.

He walked over the desert sands with no fear of capture; the ever-shifting earth was his dutiful protector. He perfected not only his mind but his body. Felt the need for food or drink when it was on its last leg, and even then no weakness ailed him. He gave up his humanity; fell into place as a piece in the great puzzle of the desert. He coexisted with the other creatures inhabiting it, and accepted his place as a small, insignificant child that existed in Mother Nature’s eye.

It was then when he found the ruins. A crumbling dome protruded from the sands, and a spire from that, the rock that made it cracked and bleached. Sky blue tiles coated it, some fractured and grooved and missing completely, made all the more beautiful for standing against the sands of time. A hatch in the roof beat open and closed with the aid of the wind, beckoning him over with a wave. When Sasori accepted the invitation he entered not a crumbling rotunda, but a Mosque. Then, he learned.

He found books of historical recollection, ancestral tracing, ancient jutsu practices and religious tomes. In the religious tomes he read that those with the power of the gods were born with crimson hair; stained with the blood of divinity. These blessed children surfaced from the ocean; born with immense strength and stamina traveled the world. He read of the ancient funeral practices that these ancestors held, recreating the body into a perfectly immortalized form with the simple use of woodwork. It was a rebirth, and none were lost; death could not grasp those people. A historical book told of the geography of his homeland; it was not born a desert. Instead, a green lush prairie draped over the kingdom and in the center a great lake rested. Only when the dreaded One-Tailed demon Shukaku set his eyes upon their land and drowned the earth and personages with sand did it become a desert; then the Land of Wind earned the nickname Mirror of Fire. And the great Mosque Sasori found himself in, the capital of his people, was smothered with a malicious joy.

It was months before Sasori exited the Mosque. He first sustained himself on the preserved foods and underground spring deep under the mosque, then he needed to consume nothing at all. He was complete by using the jutsu his ancestors had created to keep anyone and everyone immortalized. Eternal. An aura of contentment surrounded him; in this tribute to his people they would not be forgotten, nor their beautiful civilization, until Sasori himself died. And Sasori would live on endlessly. He would see the rise and fall of kingdoms, the devastation of war and the vigour of humanity. Famine and disease would only serve to humor him while watching the rise and fall of Eras like one would watch the crests and collapses of ocean waves. He would outlive even the shinobi art itself and become a myth whispered on the tongues of the ancients. His excitement was so powerful that he couldn’t stop his new body from shaking. His wooden limbs rattled in his sockets and loud clacks sounded out as if he was an overgrown cicada.

As Sasori set off through the Land of Wind the new understanding of his calling in the world unfurled in a path before him.


End file.
